NYC, local relatives breathe sigh of relief

New York City ducked Hurricane Irene's anticipated Mike Tyson-like knockout punch Sunday, and local residents with Big Apple ties are thankful their families and friends avoided a major beating.

Unlike some interior areas of New York state and New England, no major flooding was reported, and damage in Manhattan and surrounding boroughs was much more scattered and minor than predicted a day earlier.

"It turned out to be much to-do about nothing," said Teddy Blauvelt of Ormond Beach, who telephoned friends in both Greenwich Village and Brooklyn's Brighton Beach on the Atlantic Ocean, where he lived until 2005.

Blauvelt said his friends ignored the mayor's mandatory evacuation order with no place to go, and were surprised to awake to still have electrical power. One friend living in a five-story building near the Hudson River told Blauvelt first-floor apartments were flooded, but more serious damage was averted along the West Side Highway.

"Waves were lapping at the top of the sea wall, just spilling over," he said. "There was not much wind or the entire area would have flooded."

Sean Abrams is a second-generation New York City police officer, whose father, Lenny, retired in South Daytona. Assigned to one of five Highway Patrol Districts in the city, the younger Abrams oversaw much of the damage reports from Irene.

At noon, he said some minor flooding had occurred on the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn and the Bronx River Parkway, but "pretty much most roads are open."

Abrams added that no major injuries were reported, no tunnels were closed and no major damage occurred to houses.

"We got lucky," he said. "Very, very lucky."

Kevin Lynch, a New York City firefighter who owns an Ormond-by-the-Sea condo, said he saw about 15 small downed trees and two stranded cars stalled in water on his morning drive on parkways from his home in Westchester to his fire station in the Bronx.

"It depends a lot where you are," he said of the damage. "I was driving in wind of maybe 20 mph. There was just a lot of rain. I think it weakened significantly between (New) Jersey and New York."

Other folks with greater New York City roots said relatives reported little or no damage. Some were dealing with power outages and cleaning yards of debris as the storm passed.

Carlos Ann Butler of Palm Coast said her son in Trumbull, Conn., near the Long Island Sound, already had a tree fall during last week's earthquake. He bought a generator and sump pump in anticipation of the hurricane.

"There's a lot of debris and they have no power. But they're OK, which I'm so glad to hear," said Butler, who in 1994 moved from Peekskill, a town about 35 miles north of New York City. "I was on pins and needles watching CNN all day. But it doesn't look as bad as it could have been."